Photo: Atlantic Productions/Facebook

Titanic Divers Discover the Shipwreck Is Decaying at an Alarming Rate

News Diving
by Eben Diskin Aug 22, 2019

It’s been 15 years since anyone dove down to check up on the Titanic wreck, and apparently it’s not doing so well. In early August, a team of explorers made five dives in the North Atlantic to check out the ship, only to find that the wreck is being rapidly destroyed by metal-eating bacteria, salt corrosion, and deep ocean currents.

Previous expeditions revealed that iron-eating microbes had colonized the wreckage, and that the whole thing would eventually dissolve into a fine powder. Some have estimated that there would be nothing left of the ship by 2030.

The RMS Titanic has been laying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, at a depth of 2.5 miles, since 1912. The ship, thought insubmersible, hit an iceberg during a voyage from Southampton to New York City and sank, killing more than 1,500 people, which is over half of all passengers and crew members.

A documentary film of the wreck by Atlantic Productions, the first ever 4K images of the ship, is currently in the works.

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